June 2018
Spotlight of the Month
Vickie L. Smoker
Snore Experts, Los Angeles, CA
I have the privilege of being part of the Snore Experts team. We have 3 awesome Doctors who love what they do and are supported by a great team who share their passion of treating our patients with the ultimate care.
Favorite success story:
Chris was my favorite and most rewarding case to complete. I have told his story on Facebook Live and maybe even somewhere else. He was 54, and his mother called as an intervention, knowing that if something was not done, he would lose his wife, his business and possibly his life. He had severe OSA and couldn’t wear the CPAP. He fell asleep during my consultation with him and at the delivery appointment and a few follow ups. 4 months into treatment this wonderful man started to emerge. Polite, talkative, and was now multi-tasking running his business while in the chair. When we succeeded with a successful sleep study, we got the most wonderful thank you card from his wife. We had saved their marriage, he was now involved in all 3 daughters events and he was “Chris” again. I still tear up thinking about how awesome that felt.
Tips for Treating Patients:
- • The team should have an appliance made for themselves to truly “feel what the patient feels”, if not the whole team, definitely the chairside assistants. This also gives you a chance to “practice” on each other.
- • Save yourself a headache and let a billing company like Pristine take care of the not so fun stuff.
- • Remember this is not a quick fix, it takes time and patience to get your patient complete. Enjoy the journey with them, get to know them!
This is such a wonderful field to be in. The amount of lives and marriages you save is so rewarding. Have fun with it, get your team involved and LIKE your team! If you have someone who does not share in the enthusiasm, let them go, you need to all be on the same page. We at Snore Experts and Sleep Certified are your lifeline, we are so excited to help you on this journey!
Vickie L. Smoker
Fresh Finds
Featured Course
Retirement Planning
With Dr. Jonathan Greenburg
How do you transition from dentistry to a flourishing sleep dentistry practice, and then move into a comfortable retirement? Dr. Jonathan Greenburg discusses the steps and details in planning your future with your new sleep practice.
Featured Webinar
Patient Sleep Studies –
Powerful Tool for Case Acceptance
With Dr. Barry Chase DDS
Informed consent. That is how patients agree to treatment. To give consent, the patient needs information. One of the most powerful sources of information in dental sleep medicine to motivate a patient to consent to treatment is the diagnostic sleep study. This webinar will discuss sleep studies, both at home testing and in-lab, and how the data recorded on the sleep study can be presented to the patient as a method of informing the patient for the need, and urgency, to proceed with oral appliance therapy.
Bring your questions!
Tuesday, June 5th
at 5 PM PST/ 8 PM EST.
Is Sleep Apnea Related to the ‘Sperm Crisis’?
The past decade or so has seen the development a worrisome trend in fertility studies — evidence that suggests the possibility of broad declines in male sperm quality.
If the sperm studies are in fact representative of a downward trend in male fertility, the question becomes: Why? What’s behind the widespread decrease in sperm quality? There’s not likely to be a single culprit, nor a simple answer. Results of a newly-released study suggest an intriguing possibility: Could the “sperm crisis” observed in the French study and others be at least partially the result of sleep apnea?